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TGB and adventure kit question

by Ryan Rogers · in General Add-On Discussion · 10/28/2009 (4:21 pm) · 4 replies

What is the largest size for a Adventure Kit level for TGB (WxH in tile units). I'm assuming that typically there is some form of software constrant that will be hit before a hardware / resource issue rears it's ugly head? Or is that a bad assumption?

I'm thinking of buying TGB and the kit for an upcoming collecting / edutainment project, but would like to have very large levels. In this case we control the machine specs, and they'll have as much as we need, so I'm not too concerned about memory consumption (within reason). I'm thinking of levels that are 6000x6000 tiles or even larger.

Thanks,
Rhino

#1
10/28/2009 (5:07 pm)
You might have to do some clever work with this to get 6000 by 6000, but that is with any engine. My suggestion would be to do smaller tilemaps and add them to loading triggers. I did a simple version of this for a trial and error and it worked pretty smoothly. I also did a single tile map 300x700, it had moderate performance, and it worked on my old 1.3Ghz. But, I still had the sprites in loading and unloading triggers.
#2
10/28/2009 (5:31 pm)
When you say the sprites, are you talking individual tiles, or just the mobile objects that were animated by sprites?

If I run into problems I'll just break the world up into individual "islands" of a more reasonable side and have teleporters to go from isle to isle. That way each island is truly just a level.

So the level editor let you create a tile map and you were able to load it at 300 x 700...did you ever try anything larger than that? Like say 1000x1000? If I do break things up into several islands, I doubt I'd have the need for any single one to be larger than that. 750x750 may even be plenty large enough.

Rhino
#3
10/28/2009 (5:34 pm)
Oh, also since you've played with the adventure kit, can you have interiors of buildings that are much larger than the simple tents shown into the pics and video on youtube...for example those so large that they may not even fit on the screen entirely at once?

Also is there any native suppport for multi-level structures, such as a tower, castle or stronghold?

Thanks again,
Rhino
#4
10/29/2009 (2:07 am)
The interiors are just more tiles/sprites, and have the same limitations as any other graphics. A tent larger than the screen would certainly be possible (like a Planescape:Torment bar, or something).

There's no multi-level support now, but perhaps something could be arranged via layer trickery. It could be simple enough with triggers at stairs up and down, displaying previously hidden floors and moving the player up another layer.

The TGB layer limit is 32, but it would practically be much lower if you also want to use several layers per level for other collision and occlusion. But if a building is large enough, loading a different map might as well be done in some cases.